Breeding success through failure

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm - Winston Churchill

Trying is the first step towards failure
- Homer Simpson

Wanting to be good at innovation, more companies are starting to realise that they need to change their attitude to failure. It's about realising that instead of having a culture where you can't afford to make any mistakes, you need one that encourages people to experiment, and possibly make them, in order to learn from failure.

Rowling had own shares of failure. But she says that failure is important because it forces you to focus on what's important. It strips away the inessential. And some failure is also inevitable.

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default," Rowling says.

"Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies."

In other words, changing your inner world and response to something that is inevitable will transform your outer reality.

The same lessons apply to management and business. There are many companies that have learned lessons from spectacular failures to create success. One of the best examples is Apple with flops like the Newton. A good breakdown of Apple's biggest flops in Wired magazine.

Indeed, some companies develop great breakthroughs and innovations by accident or mistake. I look at this phenomenon here.

The question is how does a company go about learning from failure without turning it into a covering-your backside exercise. Some good advice from Harvard Business School.

"It hardly needs to be said that organizations cannot learn from failures if people do not discuss and analyze them. Yet this remains an important insight. The learning that is potentially available may not be realized unless thoughtful analysis and discussion of failure occurs ... An example of effective analysis of failure is found in the meticulous and painstaking analysis that goes into understanding the crash of an airliner. Hundreds of hours may go into gathering and analyzing data to sort out exactly what happened and what can be learned. Compare this kind of analysis to what takes place in most organizations after a failure."

HBS recommends setting up systems that include having experts and people inside the organisation analysing what went wrong and how to avoid it happening again, and talking about it openly to encourage different perspectives and ideas.

Of course, there are failures and there are failures. Some mistakes are just lethal. One example might be producing and marketing a dysfunctional car tire, or sloppy work putting together a plane. But encouraging failure does not mean you forget about supervision, quality control, or respect for sound practices. Just the opposite. It's more about identifying excusable mistakes and learning from them.

Time to ask yourself whether your workplace learns from mistakes. Does it encourage people to experiment or are mistakes not tolerated? What are some of your biggest mistakes? And what lessons did you learn?

Posted by Leon GettlerJune 16, 2008 7:32 AM

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Great post, Leon. Here in the States, we are seeing the leadership at an increasing number of small and midsize firms turn to operational philosophies such as "fast failure" (identify and learn from a failure and quickly move on) to reinforce open, transparent and trusting workplace cultures. In fact, I think this notion fits small firms best, since they are nimble and often have to address and move past failure as part of the innovative process to compete with their larger peers -- especially in the global marketplace.